Sanitizing Door Handle Keeps Doctors Germ-Free [Video]

Hospital door handles are one of the many points of contact that can contribute to the spread of viruses and cause infections in medical settings. Hospital Acquired Infections are a real threat and the one logical solution to prevent them is for people to clean or sanitize their hands regularly. Cleaning and sanitizing stations are common in hospitals but they require staff to stop what they’re doing and they end up not being used enough.
British studio Agency of Design worked with Altitude Medical to design a simple solution that incorporates sanitizing into the regular flow of staff’s daily work.

They came up with the PullClean, a hospital door handle that is also a hand sanitizer. The bottom of the handle has a button that releases a small amount of hand sanitizer.

The handle is also fitted with sensors that detect when the door is used and when the sanitizer is pressed – providing information on how often staff clean and sanitize their hands. The data collected can be viewed via a web portal and gives feedback on the hand sanitizing practices of the hospital.

The PullClean is designed to encourage hospital staff to clean their hands every time they go through doors. It is specifically designed to be in the “line of motion” of staff to make the sanitizing process simple, easy, and doesn’t require too much time or thinking from the staff.

Pre-production prototypes of the PullClean have been used in a clinical trial in a leading US hospital, and the trial team reported a rise in the rates of hand sanitizing after the handles were installed. Altitude Medical is currently producing the handle, which will cost $200 when it ships later in the year.